Hillary's new ad is awesome

[Huey Grey]

Because you're cherry picking. There are plenty of examples in this thread that say you're wrong, but you're just bleeping over those and only reading what fits your narrative.

I find it ironic that when you're busted on cherry picking, you have to accuse me of the same. I've supplied ample evidence that even whatsup's articles corroborate, while you have supplied nothing. Accept it, there is a gap. It may not be 77 cents or 82 cents. But it is 5-9 cents. Sorry you can't accept this fact.

 

[The Tradition]

If it used to be 23 percent and now it's 5 percent and the margin of error is 4 percent, then we're basically arguing about a vanishing gap. And this gap is vanishing all by itself without President Hillary mandating anything.

 

[The Tradition]

Here's an example of a legitimate reason for "same job, different pay".

Male and female employees are hired at the same time, at the same rate of pay. Female takes 12 weeks of leave a couple of times during her career to have babies, but the man doesn't.

The female is given "Meets Expectations" performance evaluations each year, and given the requisite annual raise, despite the fact that she was not in the office doing any work during these interruptions to her career.

Meanwhile, the male employee is busting his ass, never misses work, and receives "Exceeds Expectations" performance evaluations each year, earning a bigger raise then his female counterpart. This results in a five percent wage gap at the end of the day.

Is this unfair? Should companies be prohibited from basing raises based on how valuable the employee has been to company objectives or the overall volume of work performed?

 

[whatsup13579er]

The fact that you claim this proves you either have a reading comprehension problem or didn't bother to read the rest of this thread. Even's whatsup's links admitted there is an unexplained gap.

Huey, it is not unexplained. There is no 5-9% gap. The data sets used to come to those conclusions are not accurate comparisons of work. I'll repost this paragraph that you refuse to read:

Furthermore, the AAUW's 6.6 cents includes some large legitimate wage differences masked by over-broad occupational categories. For example, its researchers count "social science" as one college major and report that, among such majors, women earned only 83 percent of what men earned. That may sound unfair... until you consider that "social science" includes both economics and sociology majors.
Economics majors (66 percent male) have a median income of $70,000; for sociology majors (68 percent female) it is $40,000. Economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhattan Institute has pointed to similar incongruities. The AAUW study classifies jobs as diverse as librarian, lawyer, professional athlete, and "media occupations" under a single rubric--"other white collar." Says Furchtgott-Roth: "So, the AAUW report compares the pay of male lawyers with that of female librarians; of male athletes with that of female communications assistants. That's not a comparison between people who do the same work."

 

[naturalmwa]

Experts have found a consistent 5-9% gap no matter what they do. That may feel insignificant to you, but taking a 9% pay cut every year is actually quite a large amount of money, especially when spread out over a working lifetime. That's a literal loss of a hundred thousand dollars for each woman.

The evidance in this thread refutes your position as women are shown in some studies to have an 8% advantage. But even if you are correct, what federal response do you think such a small disparity warrants? People who can prove discrimination already have the tools to sue for damages, right? What policy change are you seeking? IMO it must be a fairly benign policy as the problem is so small.

 

[naturalmwa]

I heard during the GOP debate, the moderators saying the gap was 23 cents, meaning women were making 77 cents on the dollar. Do you agree there is disinformation out there? Also, Natural said he used to buy into this, but has now determined it's a non-issue. I think you should spend more time trying to reel one of your own back in. They're getting away, Red.

Now you're calling for a hit on me? It's real easy to convince yourself of the truth on this. You google up gender pay inequality and you will find all sorts of articles with the 77% number. You read down to the part where they explain where that number comes from and you find it doesn't take any mitigating factors into account. You then google for studies that adjust for circumstances and you find that for all the press this gets, there are not a lot of studies. But those that have been done show the problem to be next to zero overall and trading in favor of women. The current disparity is almost all attributed to choices people make mainly about children. There is no rampant gender discrimination. We should be celebrating a win.

 

[The Tradition]

There is no rampant gender discrimination. We should be celebrating a win.

But if we declare victory, that's a major club in Hillary's bag that can't be used to beat Republicans over the head with.

 

[naturalmwa]

But if we declare victory, that's a major club in Hillary's bag that can't be used to beat Republicans over the head with.

I disagree, it shows liberalism worked in the past and we should be applying it to real problems in the present. Liberals just need to learn to sell victory. My team is really bad at marketing.

 

[unIowa]

I am disappointed to see so many liberals starting to fall in line and lock-step with Hillary. She isn't a good person folks.

 

[hawkifann]

I doubt anybody thinking rationally would believe this.

However, wouldn't you believe that a male and female process engineer with equal experience (and equal performance evaluations, etc.) should be making the same salary? I certainly do.

Within a standard range, yes. I know within our teams there are some differences. They don't track by gender, but they can track based on where an employee came from last and made there, how much experience they have, etc. A general rule I've seen is that while management does their best to keep pulling the rest of the staff up, annual raises are almost universally small and new hires (experienced people from other groups/companies, not new graduate hires) often come in at the higher end of the spectrum and can walk in the door making more than people who have been in place for 10 years.

 

[The Tradition]

Within a standard range, yes. I know within our teams there are some differences. They don't track by gender, but they can track based on where an employee came from last and made there, how much experience they have, etc. A general rule I've seen is that while management does their best to keep pulling the rest of the staff up, annual raises are almost universally small and new hires (experienced people from other groups/companies, not new graduate hires) often come in at the higher end of the spectrum and can walk in the door making more than people who have been in place for 10 years.

THAT is a legitimate beef.

Given that, I would support legislation requiring that employers develop wage scales, and that employers be forbidden from offering a salary based on what an applicant was paid at his last job.

What you were paid at your last job has nothing to do with what the new job should pay. Your pay should be equitable to what your coworkers are making.

Employers would benefit because if they create nondiscriminatory wage scales and follow this rule, it will shield them from discrimination claims based on several existing laws as well.

 

[Jan Itor]

Now you're calling for a hit on me? It's real easy to convince yourself of the truth on this. You google up gender pay inequality and you will find all sorts of articles with the 77% number. You read down to the part where they explain where that number comes from and you find it doesn't take any mitigating factors into account. You then google for studies that adjust for circumstances and you find that for all the press this gets, there are not a lot of studies. But those that have been done show the problem to be next to zero overall and trading in favor of women. The current disparity is almost all attributed to choices people make mainly about children. There is no rampant gender discrimination. We should be celebrating a win.

Well, Red would probably follow you around trying to get you back in his camp. I've been trying to convince him his sources are either wrong, or he's not reading them right.

And Hillary just keeps going from town hall to town hall talking about the income inequality and how she's going to fix it. That and she tells us all how her enemies are Iran, ISIS, and the Republicans. Great, if she wins, another eight years of divisiveness.

 

[hawkifann]

THAT is a legitimate beef.

Given that, I would support legislation requiring that employers develop wage scales, and that employers be forbidden from offering a salary based on what an applicant was paid at his last job.

What you were paid at your last job has nothing to do with what the new job should pay. Your pay should be equitable to what your coworkers are making.

Employers would benefit because if they create nondiscriminatory wage scales and follow this rule, it will shield them from discrimination claims based on several existing laws as well.

But that's not entirely true. If I'm looking for a job right now because it's time for a new challenge, I'm not simply going to submit to what they offer.....I'm going to factor in that I make $X now and would need $X + Y% or else it's not worth it to me to leave. It's not about the employer using my past salary, it's about me being unwilling to take something short of a raise.

Most companies do have wage scales and most reasonably smart companies stay within them.....but there's still room for a small amount of difference. Lets say a company has a terminal position (Widget Maker 5 where Widget Maker ranges from 1-5) with a midpoint of $100k and the general target of average performers making 90% of mid-point. Say I get promoted from Widget Maker 4 and get a bump to $90k to be in line with regs. I get my 2% raises every year and am making close to $93k a few years later. Company decides we need another Widget Maker 5 and a candidate from outside the company with decent experience interviews well. They're interested in the job, but their company currently pays enough that the candidate wouldn't come over unless they can make $97k. Company hires and now the new hire makes more than I do. It's all still legal and within guidelines....it may or may not be entirely fair, but it is what it is.

 

[naturalmwa]

Well, Red would probably follow you around trying to get you back in his camp. I've been trying to convince him his sources are either wrong, or he's not reading them right.

And Hillary just keeps going from town hall to town hall talking about the income inequality and how she's going to fix it. That and she tells us all how her enemies are Iran, ISIS, and the Republicans. Great, if she wins, another eight years of divisiveness.

What does she say she wants to do? I'm really only interested in policy changes.

I'm pretty sure you are correct that we will have a politically divided nation after 2016 no matter who wins. I could see O'Malley, Kasich and possibly Rubio as conciliatory leaders. Clinton will probably give the Rs more than any other D would, but the personality for conflict is the price.

 

[The Tradition]

If you're a Widget Maker 4 and they're hiring a Widget Maker 5, I would expect that he'd get paid more than you.

But I see your point: employers will offer more to a candidate if they really want the guy based on experience, skills, labor market conditions, etc., but doing that leads to exposure for sex discrimination claims if current employees are paid in a discriminatory manner as a result of this new hire. So, that company would need to upgrade the wage scale to make room for the new guy, and bring everybody else up to keep the wages non-discriminatory. Most employers don't do this.

 

[hawkifann]

If you're a Widget Maker 4 and they're hiring a Widget Maker 5, I would expect that he'd get paid more than you.

But I see your point: employers will offer more to a candidate if they really want the guy based on experience, skills, labor market conditions, etc., but doing that leads to exposure for sex discrimination claims if current employees are paid in a discriminatory manner as a result of this new hire. So, that company would need to upgrade the wage scale to make room for the new guy, and bring everybody else up to keep the wages non-discriminatory. Most employers don't do this.

You missed part of the post. I'm describing scenario where i'm a 4, get promoted to 5 and work a few years getting small annual raises and the new hire comes in above that.

They don't have to update the wage scale because the "midpoint" for the position is $100k and the general guideline is 90% of midpoint and up. I'm $93k and comfortably within the midpoint range and so is the new hire....and there's a 4% difference. If a company truly does this correctly without regard for gender, you'll have enough scatter that the overall differences should wash out. I would say that two new external hires made at the same time should have pretty much the same offer budget, so I would think non-discriminatory differneces should be no more than a couple percent and attributable mostly to one candidate negotiating better/harder than the other.

Which sort of gets to Natural's point. Any kind of study like this is going to have a statistical margin of error because you're trying to account for so many non-precise factors. I would assume that margin to be 3-4% just like most of our polling. So women making 97-103% would be within the margin of error. If we're currently sitting at 95 cents on the dollar, we're 2 cents off the margin of error. Statistics pretty clearly show that the gap used to be 23% and now the numbers seem fairly unanimous that it's somewhere between 5-9%. That's pretty clear progress over a couple decades and some samples of younger women show that they might even have an advantage. As a statistical exercise, I'd be curious how many women in the 50+ age group spent their whole careers behind and will never catch up, largely because they started back when the wage gap was 20%. I'd hypothesize that the changes we've made in hiring/pay laws and the fact that most companies of any size have defined wage scales, what difference is left should continue to trend towards margin of error.

Outside of obvious campaign strategies to make women feel like Hillary is on their side, what else can a POTUS do to knock a couple % off the gap? We'll never live in a world where there isn't some level of variance based on when people were hired, documented performance reviews, etc.

 

[The Tradition]

Here's the problem. The EEOC would not accept "negotiated better" as a non-discriminatory reason for an unequal paycheck if investigating a charge of pay discrimination. Might as well say the male candidate was taller or had bigger muscles.

Futhermore, the EEOC will focus on the complainant's check, and the checks of all her comparators. If even one male with the same seniority is found to be earning more, the EEOC will expect to hear a non-discriminatory reason why.

They'll look at the "scatter" too, which is also a rich source of exposure. If male salaries are enough standard deviations different from female salaries, they'll slap you with a charge of adverse impact, meaning your pay decisions have the effect of discriminating against women. There's no defense against that one. Lube up.

Seniority is generally safe as a reason for disparity, but just about everything else can be challenged. Performance evaluations can be found to have discriminatory bias. Sales commissions can be found to have discriminatory calculation schemes, or territories assigned in discriminatory ways.

Keeping everyone on a defensible wage scale is the best way to avoid charges of discrimination, and legislation requiring it would remove the possibility of inequities unintentionally forming in the pay structure.

 

[hawkifann]

You're right about the EEOC not accepting "negotiated better", but there are realities of the market and the EEOC isn't likely to be involved (or rule against the company) if the pay disparity is just a couple percent and the overall balance within that position is demonstrably fair.

Maybe small businesses account for the difference, but small businesses without defined wage scales do run the risk of being taken to court on a discrimination charge.

 

[Jan Itor]

What does she say she wants to do? I'm really only interested in policy changes.

I'm pretty sure you are correct that we will have a politically divided nation after 2016 no matter who wins. I could see O'Malley, Kasich and possibly Rubio as conciliatory leaders. Clinton will probably give the Rs more than any other D would, but the personality for conflict is the price.

She doesn't say what or how she's going to fix it. She's just paying lip service to something that doesn't really exist. Trying to reel in the women. That's why I asked Huey/Red to tell us Hillary's details after he complained about no details coming from the GOP.

Also, Sanders said something about people shouting about gun control. He's been saying that for some time now, and because he said it again in the Dem debate, Hillary goes out to the next Town Hall and says apparently, if a women speaks out about gun control, she's shouting. What a witch.

 

[herecomethehawkeyes]

she just seems like an insincere, cliche filled **ntbag.

 

[Huey Grey]

The evidance in this thread refutes your position as women are shown in some studies to have an 8% advantage. But even if you are correct, what federal response do you think such a small disparity warrants? People who can prove discrimination already have the tools to sue for damages, right? What policy change are you seeking? IMO it must be a fairly benign policy as the problem is so small.

I've already responded to this criticism. The gap for these women making more is explained because they have way more education than their male counterparts. But when you look at women overall, the 5-9 cent gap can't be explained by educational differences, job differences, or familial differences.

As for policy changes, I have no idea. But I will say that denying the problem exists in the first place is a sure-fire way of not solving it.

 

[Huey Grey]

BTW, anyone else think that women apparently "not being able to negotiate for better wages" is a pretty flimsy explanation for the gap?

 

[wyohawk]

she just seems like an insincere, cliche filled **ntbag.

 

[The Tradition]

I've already responded to this criticism. The gap for these women making more is explained because they have way more education than their male counterparts. But when you look at women overall, the 5-9 cent gap can't be explained by educational differences, job differences, or familial differences.

As for policy changes, I have no idea. But I will say that denying the problem exists in the first place is a sure-fire way of not solving it.

Already covered all this. I guess it's pointless discussing this with you any further if you're going to act like your points haven't been addressed.

 

[The Tradition]

BTW, anyone else think that women apparently "not being able to negotiate for better wages" is a pretty flimsy explanation for the gap?

No, because sociologists have confirmed that women are less motivated by money than men are. Women are more willing to accept monetary trade-offs for things like flexibility, interest in the work (i.e., I want to work with kids), the right fit with the workplace and coworkers, and so on.

Men and women are different and their attitudes and motivators are different.